Unique music festival taking place in Pocklington

Shed Seven’s Rick Witter and Paul Banks, Thea Gilmore, The Howl and The Hum and Bridlington’s Seafret have all been ‘handpicked’ to perform at a unique festival taking place under one roof.

Pocklington Arts Centre will be bringing the festival season to a close next month with a celebration of some of the best established and emerging talent in the UK today.

Twenty acts will perform across three stages in one weekend of discovery for fans of live music and the spoken word in a festival that will be the first of its kind for the venue.

The centre’s director Janet Farmer said: “Handpick’d Festival is an opportunity for us to showcase some of the artists who have performed here previously and are firm favourites, while also being a celebration of some of the musicians and acts we admire the most.”

Friday September 28

Shed Seven founding members Rick Witter and Paul Banks will headline the Friday night with an acoustic set.

Expect all their classic anthems such as Going for Gold, Chasing Rainbows and Getting Better plus songs from their new album Instant Pleasures.

York-based four-piece band The Howl and The Hum combine dark hypnotic pop with post-punk influences.

Kicking things off on Friday will be Leeds singer-songwriter and YouTube sensation Jade Helliwell, with her distinctive sound of British Americana and country.

Saturday’s line-up also features Bridlington boys Seafret, who went down a storm at the centre’s 2016 Platform Festival. The duo has supported the likes of Hozier, Kodaline and James Bay, and has amassed a huge fan base with over 10 million Spotify streams to their name.

The Eskies and their unique brand of folk noir/gypsy jazz/sea shanty and swaggering stage spectacle are also on the bill.

The colourful, energetic and crowd-stamping, CoCo and the Butterfields will add the intimate vibrance of a village folk fair combined with powerful vocal melodies and an undercurrent of driving beatbox, delivering catchy songs resonating in a stadium-filling urban pop vibe.

If live poetry is your thing, then Matt Abbott will not disappoint.

Leeds based anthemic rock-pop brothers The Dunwells have also been ‘handpick’d’.

There will be a touch of 60’s rock folk and blues thanks to Buffalo Skinners, who BBC2’s Bob Harris, has described as simply “fantastic”; and maverick of the folk world, and York based singer-songwriter, Dan Webster will open the main stage.

The full line up is: Friday September 28 – Rick Whitter and Paul Banks Shed Seven Acoustic; The Howl and The Hum; Jade Helliwell.